Roy Hay Says to Look For Culture Club's Long Delayed "Tribes" Next Year

Culture Club’s long overdue Tribes album still won’t see the light of day this year but guitarist Roy Hay says fans will hear the album “at some stage next year”.

“What happened is we went into the studio three years ago and came out with some great tracks,” Roy tells Noise11.com. “Then we thought ‘we don’t need to rush this out. Let’s make sure we get this right and really make an album we’d be proud of’. So we starting writing again in January and we are hopefully going back into the studio in October. (It won’t be out) by the time we come to Australia but certainly at some stage next year the album will be out”.

Culture Club performed the new songs "Different Man" and "Like I Used To" in December 2016 in Melbourne and "More Than Silence" on the June 2016 Australian tour.

Roy sees the irony in that the first three Culture Club albums took less time to create than Tribes. “Funnily enough we have recorded the same amount of songs,” he says. “We just haven’t had the machine in place or felt that it was the right time to put them out or picked the right ones. I think we have probably recorded about 30 songs by now actually”.

On the 2016 Culture Club tour the band played covers of songs by Prince, T Rex and David Bowie. “We’ve got a few different ideas (for the next tour),” Roy says. “We got all the hits and then a number of new covers that everyone loves playing. It will be a fun show. You might see a Rolling Stones song in there but you can’t always get what you want, can you?”

This will be the third Culture Club Australian tour in eighteen months. “As my buddies in Australia says, “you’re like London buses. We don’t see you for 20 years and then two of you come along”.